Slashback: Porntrusion, Greenness, Rollercoaster

Tonight's Slashback includes updates on the state of MPlayer, Google's API release, DIY backyard transportation, and (thanks to politech) the "hidden camera" bill. Oh, and apparently, Mars is not the lush, green paradise you thought it might be. Read on for the details.

But what about the nude Russian girls who apparently need me? happyclam writes: "The text of the "hidden camera" bill has been posted at politechbot.com. Although we have already beat this one to death, I found the actual bill worth reading. One thing that had not been mentioned is that it allows for civil and criminal liability for spammers who email sexual advertisements without proper markings. Although I still prefer positive labeling (e.g. "kid-safe(tm)") to negative labeling (e.g. "socially questionable"), this bill does, I think, have a few good points to it. Read it."

DVDs want to be free. An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this email and the latest news the mplayer source code is finally 100% GPL compliant. Maybe an official Debian package will finally be released as well instead of the marillat release. Work on integrating the open source Xvid MPEG4 codec is coming along nicely as well."

Gravity always wins, but likes to play. mzdial writes: "On March 14 you did a piece on this Southern Indiana's man love of roller coasters and how he created his own in his backyard! The Indianapolis Star has done a wonderful story with video and photos about this wonderful contraption. You can find the article here."

They're greedy for hits. ruvreve writes "A follow-up to the recent article about Google's release of an API. This article talks about the apparent success of releasing the API. It mentions that about 10,000 people have signed up and they have received 25 implementations in the first week. It goes on to talk about how Google needs to capitalize on the ability to provide a 'profitable' web service and maintain its position as the number-one search engine."

Chasing green, wet shadows. young-earth writes "In a disappointing followup to this story, an article on astronomy.com shows that what was thought to be chlorophyll on Mars found in the Pathfinder expedition was most probably artifacts of the processing model used. However future missions will profit from the work being done now: "...developing new methods to enable future rovers to select appropriate targets on the martian surface for further spectroscopic or close-up microscopic examination". So maybe in another mission..."

Comments

Why must we leap to conclusions?

[cliffy2000]

"Mars must be green because we found what we THINK is chlorophyll!" *sigh* What ever happened to science.
-- Note: I'm aware of all the flaws in my argument. Yes, I know that theories are constantly being disproven and that science has and always will be based upon assumptions. But please let me rant. It's all I have.

Re:Why must we leap to conclusions?

[spike hay]

Scientists should stop realeasing info like that to the stupid press before their results are confirmed.

Remember when they said the mile-wide asteriod had a 1% chance of hitting in 2021? That got everybody all worked up. When I watched the news, the media spun it that the asteriod was definitely going to hit, just to sensationalize it. Then a few weeks later, the astronomers admitted they fucked up.

I guess scientists get their research bucks by having stories like these, though.

Re:Why must we leap to conclusions?

[s20451]

Scientists should stop realeasing info like that to the stupid press before their results are confirmed.

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but still. Suppose the research was suppressed due to lack of supporting evidence. The conspiracy theorists would have a field day with "the government" keeping news of "Martian chlorophyll" under wraps -- which means of course that there are secret Martian farms feeding an intelligent super-race, who built the Mars face, and so on. (Just imagine the Fox specials.) The point is that the scientists can't win, so they might as well disclose everything, even their screwups.

Re:Why must we leap to conclusions?

[sam_handelman]

That's not flamebait, although he is mistaken. Immature, wrong press releases cost you funding. {JOKE}Science is not like IT, where famous screwups are more fundable than competent nobodies (anyone else remember that Dilbert episode?){/JOKE}

That said, I see no reason (I'm a biologist, not an astronomer) why alien cells would have chlorophyll. If they did find chlorophyll, it woul be a sign that we'd contaminated Mars with terrestrial cells.

Even if a Martian cell where photosynthetic, I would not expect it to express chlorophyll! Chlorophyll is long, big and complicated. An independently evolved protein, from an alien organism, would never look much like chlorphyll - the odds against such a coincidence are astronomical. Assuming the alien life had membranes, photosynthetic aliens MIGHT use a membrane-bound light-dependent electron pump like the ones found in chloroplasts and their bacterial cousins; however, since there are many, many classes of both light reactive molecules and of redox proteins (electron pumps) in terrestrial organisms, many of these proteins are not-at-all similar to one another, so even if an alien organism "worked the same" as a terrestrial chlorplast (chloroplasts are the cellular organelles in plants that harvest light) it'd have independently evolved proteins with similar functions, they wouldn't be chlorophyll, and they wouldn't be similar to chlorphyll in terms of sequence or overall shape. The odds are incredibly small! Even the twenty amino acids we use are a result of the original molecular evolution of terrestrial life; an alien organism might not have the same twenty (assuming that it had amino acids at all; we don't know enough to make a definitive conclusion, but nucleic acids and amino acids may be the only molecules in existence that could make a biological organism.)

All musings aside, the original poster was correct. Chlorophyll on Mars was a stupid thing to expect.

Re:Why must we leap to conclusions?

[Chasuk]

Isn't science supposed to be testable? With Mars close enough that testing is within the realm of possibility, why publish this type of nearly-tabloid-like supposition prematurely?

Is real research really that hard up for media attention? Is science not "sellable" unless is about transporters and FTL devices?

That's my theory, which might also explain why charlatans such as John Edward and James von
Praagh receive such consistently high ratings...

The Gates Testimony - Why Microsoft Will Win

I love the language in Sec. 103 of the bill

[realgone]

Commencing not later than 12 months after the establishment of the new domain under section 102, any operator of a commercial Internet web site or online service that has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors shall register such web site or online service with the new domain and operate such web site or online service under the new domain.

As written, this is laughably vague. Clearly, no company's primary business would be distributing harmful material to minors. For one thing, the lil' buggers don't have credit cards, so profits might be somewhat hard to come by at first. (Dang, there goes the IPO, Chester. Did you save the receipts on that new office furniture?) More appropriate would be to call it "material intended for adults but which may be judged to have a harmful effect on minors".

Here's something even more troubling. In the section where they attempt to define what's "harmful to minors", here's one of the acceptable standards:

...taking the material as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Again, incredibly vague and open to abuse. Under this definition, material which does have scientific, etc. value for adults but doesn't for minors would be fair game, right?

Shit! Time to pull down that AARP website fellers!

Re:I love the language in Sec. 103 of the bill

[IanA]

umm.. it says
any operator of a commercial Internet web site or online service that has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors

what this means is.. make a porn site for adults. that material is considered harmful to minors.

it's primary business therefore is making available said material... which is considered harmful to minors.

you're reading it as if it says the material is primarily marketed towards youngsters, which it does NOT imply in its wording

i might not have explained it well enough, but hopefully the point is understood.

Re:I love the language in Sec. 103 of the bill

[brooks_talley]

...any operator of a commercial Internet web site or online service that has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors...

In addition to being laughably vague, it's also unenforceable. It's clear that they wanted to avoid the whole community standards issue by using the language "is harmful to minors". However, they've put prosecutors in the position of having to prove that any given material is harmful to minors.

On the one hand, this could make all sorts of "normal" speech illegal: tobacco ads, discriptions of drunken nights at bars, encouragement to drop out of school, you name it. On the other hand, it doesn't necessarily cover anything in particular, so even the most hardcore porn could argue that it isn't "harmful to minors." Since there's no objective description included in the law, it will be up to prosecutors and juries to decide what constitutes "harmful," and that will lead to an uneven application of the law, which in turn will make it subject to invalidation by the courts.

My guess is that the law was never intended to be enforced. It's just asking to be struck down by the courts, but the congresspeople who vote for it can wave their little "Morally upright" flag come the next election.

Cheers
-b

Re:Speed vs. APIs

[jbum]

From the FAQ on Google:

7. What happens if I go over my limit of 1,000 queries?

If you make more than 1,000 queries in a day, our server will respond with a SOAP Fault stating that you exceeded your daily query total. You might want to get some sleep and start querying again tomorrow.

* * *

My first reaction on hearing about these APIs, where that they might be an attempt on Google's part to cut down on automated searching without getting a lot of bad PR. They're providing limits in the guise of generosity.

The fact is, it was already pretty trivial to search Google using plain old HTML (via Perl or Java, or whatever).

But now, if Google starts prohibiting folks from using such search-bots (that use the HTML interface to Google), they can say "Look, we provided an API for this purpose!"